


Rubber Cement and Other Poisons

by VioletDarkbloom



Series: Broken Pottery [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bottom!Sherlock, First Time, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Post-Reichenbach, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-06-01
Packaged: 2018-01-21 10:54:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1548083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VioletDarkbloom/pseuds/VioletDarkbloom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John wakes to an empty bed and the threat of more severe derealisation that he’s felt since Sherlock’s return. He inhales possibility as he rises and waits in front of his door, afraid to see what’s outside.  There could be dinosaurs out there, or an empty flat.  Sherlock could be hanging from the rafters or sleeping naked on the settee.  John lingers in the not knowing, letting his mind leave him until it’s too much and he has to do anything to ground himself.<br/>---</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> I made this a sequel to Found Patterns in Shattered Pottery because I think of it as one way the story could progress as opposed to the way the story _did_ progress. If you don't want to read FPiSP, the general idea is Sherlock and John spend the night snuggling after having a bit of an unhealthy discussion about their feelings for one another, particularly because John hasn't forgiven Sherlock for Reichenbach/St Barts.
> 
> Corrections and critiques are welcome and appreciated.

John wakes to an empty bed and the threat of more severe derealisation that he’s felt since Sherlock’s return. He inhales possibility as he rises and waits in front of his door, afraid to see what’s outside. There could be dinosaurs out there, or an empty flat. Sherlock could be hanging from the rafters or sleeping naked on the settee. John lingers in the not knowing, letting his mind leave him until it’s too much and he has to do anything to ground himself.

The flat is empty but smells of cigarette smoke. John forgives it; it’s one of the less dangerous things Sherlock might’ve done to cope. Sherlock’s door is shut, though, so he might be out buying or he might be in there doing something even worse. Again John is invaded by the image of his flatmate’s feet swinging slowly. Silly to worry about that when he should be picturing a thin blue arm with a needle stabbed below the elbow crease.

John thinks about vomiting and makes tea instead.

 _It’s nothing,_ he tells himself. _One more odd thing about our friendship. He comes back from the dead, he tells me he deserves to be hurt, we both ignore my erection pressed against his arse, he sleeps in my arms. So it goes._ He’s sure the cold myasthenia spreading out from his diaphragm is only somatisation, but it’s frightening despite. 

Probably he just needs another cup of tea, assuming his muscles still function well enough to put one together.

Except tea doesn’t help, not when there’s silence behind Sherlock’s door where there still might be …anything. _Fuck me_ thinks John, and he sets down his cup and walks grimly forward, making a fist well before he’s close enough to actually knock.

Inside his room, Sherlock makes a sound like a sleepy teenager on a school morning. “You okay?” calls John.

“Yes, thanks,” says Sherlock. John thinks he’s no longer obligated to trust Sherlock about things like this, so he tries the door and finds Sherlock splayed on the bed, which he assumes is better than finding him folded and foetal. 

“Yes?” says Sherlock, glaring. The room is smoky and dark, and John wants to test his melting muscles by sprinting _away_.

“You’ve been smoking,” says John, because he needs an opening.

“Obviously.”

John rubs at his face, eyes stinging. “I guess I should be glad that’s all you’ve done,” he says. “Or is it?”

Sherlock rolls himself up and uncurls into sitting. “I don’t run out and use every time you throw a wobbly,” he says, as though John doesn’t matter at all. As though it was petty, what they said last night. “I’m really not interested in helping you through your sexuality crisis, either.”

It might not be a challenge, but John takes it that way. He’s been clear, after all. Sherlock knows what he wants. 

“Crisis is over,” John says without warmth. “I spent six months sleeping in your bed trying to smell you. You think I didn’t bring men here before I moved out?” Sherlock is momentarily startled but manages to find John’s eyes, and then of course he can see everything.

“Men? Not more than one, I think,” says Sherlock. “Spectacular failure, put you off the whole idea. You moved out soon after.”

John bites the inside of his lip and images the blood he tastes is Sherlock’s. “Then what happened?” he asks. 

“Something trivial and emotional,” Sherlock says. 

“Alprazolam and whiskey,” says John. “Not enough, of course, but I did mean for it to be.”

“It’s simple math,” says Sherlock, so John hits him. It feels better than it did the last time. Sherlock brings his fingers to his own bleeding lip and looks smug.

“You fucked it up four times, genius,” says John, pulling Sherlock’s hand to his mouth. “Clean?” he says.

“All the recommended tests,” says Sherlock, understanding. “Plus the PEP, I’ve told you.” John nods and brings Sherlock’s fingers to his mouth to suck away the blood. Sherlock shivers and then sniffs loudly. 

“You said you love me,” says John.

“Falling in love is trivial, John.” Sherlock tries for bitter and succeeds at breathless as John dips his tongue between fingers. “People fall in love all the time. There’s nothing intellectual about it. It’s all neurochemicals and while loops and weakness. Yes, I love you. I thought I was better than this and I’m not. Are you going to keep reminding me of my weakness?” 

“Probably,” says John. “I like seeing you weak.” It isn’t what he meant, but he leaves it in case he needs it later. “Sherlock, it stinks in here. You need to at least open a window before we both get lung cancer.”

Sherlock folds away his retort and instead marches past John without a word.

“Where the hell are you going?” asks John. Sherlock huffs and keeps walking, and John follows him out and up into his own bedroom. The whole flat exists as _ostranenie_ , and they walk as though the fog of it is its own tactile enjoyment, _taking time_. When they make it to the space between the door and John’s bed, John chooses to sort and label his emotions. There’s more humiliation that he’d thought before he’d looked at it, and he doesn’t know why. Guilt’s like honey poured over everything and impossible to get off your hands. His other major emotions are bundled: fear with love, arousal with rage. Fear will paralyse him, he knows like a Bene Geserit. _Fine._ “Your clothes reek of smoke,” says John, “so you’ll just bring the smell up here. Take them off.” 

John is doing soldier posture but feeling thirteen, pushing down all the love/fear and propping up all the arousal/hate so he can keep himself from reaching out and steadying Sherlock’s hand as it struggles with buttons. Sherlock looks like he’s gone away, his face blank and calm while his fingers slip and shiver. He stops when he’s got his shirt off and folded on the floor.

“Keep going,” says John, and for one real half of a second, Sherlock looks miserable. John bites the broken spot inside his lip and stays stern, so Sherlock carefully shifts his features back into nothingness and takes off his trousers. 

John has imagined having Sherlock in only his pants, and it’s never been anything so awful. Sherlock is looking away, lips straight, and John wants desperately to be overwhelmed by the smooth statue but instead it's god damn Rilke and he is barely able to endure, he really is. And of course Sherlock really is playing at serenity, competing angel analogies be damned. John remembers something he heard in church once, maybe at a funeral or when he was very young: “Wherever you go, be sure to take God into the room with you.” There’s something empowering in that, the idea that you can bring God with you instead of following where He leads. Or something. John doesn’t care about God, but he thinks he may have forgotten to bring himself into the room with him just now, so he steps forward and collects Sherlock into a completely platonic hug.

Sherlock wraps his arms around John and whispers, “I hate you back,” and it might not be a challenge, but John takes it that way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Rilke quote mentioned is “For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror  
> which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so,  
> because it serenely disdains to destroy us.  
> Every angel is terrible.”
> 
> Ostranenie (Oстранение to my sort of fellow Russians) means defamiliarisation, particularly the artistic technique of showing the familiar in a weird way.


	2. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dubcon bits here, no smut.

Sherlock is on his back on the bed, eyes bugged and mouth open, and John can’t remember but is fairly sure Sherlock did not lie down by choice. Nothing on John stings or aches, so he hopes he only shoved on shoulders. That would be all right. Sherlock isn’t trying to get up, anyway. He’s just looking at John all ichthyic, in only his pants. 

“Sherlock,” says John. “Come back to me.” Sherlock shudders and then closes his eyes.

“I haven’t gone anywhere,” he says. John hears insult in the statement or the tone, but he can’t parse it, so he ignores it. He climbs on the bed and lies beside Sherlock, and Sherlock turns toward him with as much volition as a heliotrope, and John aligns their foreheads and waits. 

John says “Sherlock” again when it feels safe.

"Help me,” says Sherlock.

“I have no idea what that means,” John says. “Seriously, honestly, not a fucking clue. Help you what? Help you stop loving me?”

“Maybe.”

John laughs and unbuttons his jeans. “Not likely.” Sherlock’s hands replace John’s on his zip and work faster. Sherlock removes John’s jumper and vest without being asked, but he still looks blank. When he’s through and they’re both in only their pants, John finally kisses him properly, and both their lips bleed again just a little, giving the kiss a scent more than a flavour. Sherlock’s hands move over John’s ribs and shoulder like spiders, so John pins them down before latching his mouth to Sherlock’s neck. It’s going well and then Sherlock flops onto his back while pushing John away so they’re side by side looking up.

“Imagine you were better,” says Sherlock. John imagines his hands around Sherlock’s neck.

“Reckon I can’t,” says John. Sherlock props himself up on an elbow and scrunches his eyebrows. “I’m only as good as I am,” John explains.

“No,” says Sherlock, put out. “Not better than you are. Not that, John. You’re not like that.”

“I don’t know what that means,” John says.

“You could never be better,” says Sherlock, and then the back of his head hits the mattress and John is on top of him, one hand tugging his hair painfully and the other poised on his collarbone. “Not like _that,_ you idiot,” Sherlock hisses. “You’re just you. There’s no better.”

“So I’m the best?” asks John. He stamps his lips against Sherlock’s cheekbones and the bridge of his nose.

“Of course not,” says Sherlock. “You’re just, you’re you. You’re John.”

John pins Sherlock’s left hand above his head and says, “I know.”

“Imagine you weren’t,” says Sherlock. “Imagine you were someone else.” His chest is rising and falling like he’s fighting positional asphyxia. 

“Who should I imagine I am?” asks John, smearing his lips over Sherlock’s neck. “Someone better?”

“No one is better,” gasps Sherlock. “You don’t understand.”

“I really don’t,” says John.

“Forget about you,” says Sherlock. “You don’t matter for this part. You’re not anyone.”

“You really want me to hurt you, don’t you?” asks John. He bites below Sherlock’s ear.

“Yes,” says Sherlock, his voice low. “God, yes.” When John licks at his own teeth marks, Sherlock gathers and says, “You’re not _someone_. You’re a candle or a planet, John. You’re a lake, Christ, please. Not you, there’s no better than you. Imagine you were anyone else. Anyone else and then imagine you were better. The best. And alone, John, imagine it. No, no football, no pints, no brothers in arms. Because you’re so much better, it would be like play—“

“You want me to imagine that I’m you,” says John. 

“Yes! Imagine that you were better in every way except the ways in which you were so much worse. Imagine, imagine what it’s like to be rejected by people who don’t even count. There are never _opportunities_ , John. Every time you get rejected, it’s because you saw an opportunity, but I, imagine the rejection without the opportunity. Imagine that every single person you meet is exactly the same as the last person, and they’re all boring and useless and on the other side of glass.”

John has stopped kissing and biting and is resting his head against Sherlock’s chest. “That sounds awful,” he says softly.

“It is,” says Sherlock. “And then there’s you, now we’re talking about you, and you’re a planet. You’re a candle, and I want you to hurt me, yes, because I don’t ever want you to leave. Because in St Petersburg I thought I could come home to you and then I couldn’t, and you’d never even kissed me then.” John gathers enough discipline to say something self-deprecating and practical, but Sherlock flings himself on top of him instead and speaks quick and quiet and deep into his ear. “I understand that people are prone to hyperbole when they first fall in love, and I understand that I’m inexperienced in this, but I’m infinitely smarter than you, John, so believe me when I say that I will have my head delivered to your door if you leave me, not to punish you but because you will have earned it.”

John flips them back and calls Sherlock a manipulative sociopath, and Sherlock stares into his eyes and waits to be hit.

“That was a sickening thing to say,” John tells him. “You don’t need to convince me to hurt you.”

“You don’t believe me?” asks Sherlock.

“I believe-- it doesn’t matter. Not right now,” says John. “I can’t stand the thought of it. Of you…not intact.”

Sherlock laughs at that, but his body is too still. “I’m fine, John,” he says. “I came back.”

John pushes himself up and looks down. “I don’t want to do this to you if you don’t want it,” he says quietly.

Sherlock’s voice is rough as he asks, “What are you going to do to me?”

“You don’t know?” Sherlock looks down and then up through his eyelashes, and John kisses him. “I’m going to hurt you,” he says, “like you wanted.”

“I thought you didn’t need my permission.”

John says, “I changed my mind,” and Sherlock closes his eyes and flushes.

“I don’t want you to want permission,” he says softly. John exhales and presses his hips forward.

“I can’t help it,” says John. “How could I love you and not need your permission?”

Sherlock’s guileless expression nearly convinces John to forget the whole thing, to let fear and love win, and to spend the whole day on soft caresses and soft words. And then Sherlock grinds his hips up once and whines, and John decided that soft is what will happen after.


	3. 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Potentially unhealthy behaviours, but I believe that different things are right for different people.

They’ve undressed but now John is standing beside the bed breathing hard. He’s torn, really _torn_ in the sense that it hurts, between tenderness and violence as he looks down at Sherlock spread out across his bed. John understands that Sherlock’s expression means subdued terror, but he can’t tell whether it’s the good kind of terror (the chase, a gun, sex with someone you’ve wanted for ages) or the bad kind (the pool, last night when John was lying still on the street covered in someone else’s blood, sex with someone who’s forcing you). But Sherlock asked, asked to be hurt, chose to lie beside John all night, chose to undress and kiss and grind. John was shy when he removed his pants, but Sherlock threw his aside like they were an enemy. And more important than anything else, Sherlock is lying with his legs apart and his arms relaxed, and he’s _hard_. One hand is resting on the crease between hip and thigh, not touching his cock but suggestive enough to make John feel fluttery.

“You’re beautiful,” says John. “You’re beautiful, and I want to hurt you.” Sherlock’s body stiffens and his eyes snap to John’s. Dilated pupils, a good sign. “I want to make you purple where I sink my teeth into you,” John says, trying to be sure. Would Sherlock let himself be …raped, essentially? Would he think of it as an experiment? The idea is horrific. John wants to hurt, wants to bruise and break and claim, but he would never take without being given. Especially not from Sherlock, not the person he loves more than he can let himself accept yet.

“John,” says Sherlock, and it’s plaintive and desperate and low. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re not raping me. I want this. Stop torturing yourself and just touch me.”

John touches, groaning softly as his hands slip over Sherlock’s shoulders and down his chest. Sherlock shivers and looks away, embarrassed or worse, and John tries to ignore his own self-doubt. He bends and presses his lips to Sherlock’s neck, and Sherlock sucks in air. 

“More,” says Sherlock, so John slides his lips down, biting and licking and kissing over Sherlock’s strangely smooth chest. The man John brought home after Sherlock died had been hairless, too, waxed from his neck to his toes. John had sucked bruises onto the man’s neck, more like nursing than sex. He hadn’t been hard, and he folded up and shook after the man left. He’s shaking now, too, but it’s wonderful as well. Sherlock smells familiar and dangerous, the smell John sought for six months while he slept in Sherlock’s bed. A sob catches in his throat, self-pity for what he went through to get to this moment. Sherlock brings a hand to the back of John’s skull and whispers, “Alive” and “I’m sorry” and “Please” while John traces a wide circle around Sherlock’s nipple with his tongue.

“I know,” says John, and he latches his mouth and sucks. Sherlock’s body goes taught and he arches, exhaling a glottal stop. He whimpers when John bites down and moans when continues toward his toes. The first bruise John leaves is on Sherlock’s stomach, between his naval and left hipbone. Sherlock pants and presses up.

“Hurts,” whispers Sherlock, and John growls.

“I want to fuck you,” John says. “I have to.”

Sherlock says, “All right,” and John makes a frustrated noise.

“Not unless you want me to, Sherlock,” he says.

“John, stop being tedious.”

John slaps him across the face.

“Not unless you want me to.”

Sherlock looks defiant. “I want you to take what you want,” he says, and John slaps him again.

Sherlock’s eyes are wide, and his hand is against his cheek.

“Tell me,” John says, and it’s a command. He sees Sherlock decide to follow it.

“I want it. I want you, I wouldn’t lie here naked and let you, god, please, look at me, it _hurts_ , John.”

John nearly jumps onto the bed, awkward and amusing if under other circumstances. He flips Sherlock onto his back and pulls his thighs apart, shoves his hips forward, handles him like a toy. 

“I’m going to lick you now,” says John, and Sherlock makes a sound that might be crying. When John’s tongue first touches him, he freezes and goes silent. It takes a long time for him to enjoy the unfamiliar experience, John can tell. John licks and sucks and bites and waits for Sherlock to relax, and when his tongue is nearly in spasm, Sherlock begins to moan.

“Oh god, John, I don’t—“ he says, and then he can only make noise. 

_Finally_ , thinks John, nuzzling his face against Sherlock. When he presses his pointed tongue into Sherlock’s hole, he’s rewarded with the sound of agonised pleasure. Sherlock shoves his own hips back and babbles about need and E. coli. John hears the word “intussusception” and spanks Sherlock hard enough to shut him up.

“There are several reasons why I’m not going to get HUS from licking your arse,” John mumbles without moving his head. Sherlock tries to laugh and can’t because John’s licking again.

“Oh Christ,” Sherlock moans. “Oh fuck. Oh…” He shoves his face into the pillow and tries to keep his breathing steady while John’s tongue wriggles against him. John’s arousal is painful, his cock and chest aching and his lungs burning. He’ll be ashamed later of the images currently in his head, of crawling into Sherlock, of consuming him, of cutting him open to see inside. Sherlock says “Please” and John knows what he wants but can’t stop licking, can’t allow even an inch of space between his lips and Sherlock’s skin. 

John manages to bring his hand to his mouth without moving, and he wets it quickly before sliding his face sideways and biting down. Sherlock yelps and swears, and John kisses his teeth marks for a moment before finally forcing his finger into Sherlock.

The noise Sherlock makes is pain, not pleasure, but he doesn’t pull away. John is derealising again, unable to accept the happiness crowding into his mind like smoke. Sherlock hasn’t relaxed and John isn’t waiting. It takes too long for him to understand that this isn’t good pain, but Sherlock says nothing to hurry the realisation. 

“I’m sorry,” says John as he removes his finger. Sherlock tenses but doesn’t react. “I won’t hurt you like that,” says John. “That doesn’t have to hurt.”

Sherlock says “I know” to the pillow.

“I’ll hurt you other ways,” says John, “but not like that.” He finds lube in the nightstand and gently presses Sherlock onto his side so he can see it. Sherlock nods once and then averts his eyes.

“It’s me,” says John. “No one else.”

“I know that.”

“Lie on your back for me, then,” says John. When Sherlock obeys, John pets him with his clean hand and presses kisses to the side of his face. “I’m going to do this to you,” says John. “No matter what, because it’s what you want. I’m going to open you, and I’m going to take you apart, and I’m going to…” He can’t finish the sentence and shakes his head instead.

“Use me,” Sherlock says, breathless.

“Yes. And also love you. Because I can’t help it, and because it’s what you need.”

Sherlock covers his face with his hands and nods.


	4. Chapter 4

Love is the most horrible thing Sherlock Holmes has ever encountered. It’s worse than E. coli (which he’s had, in South America) and worse than coming down from cocaine. At least when you’re ill there’s something to distract you. It’s worse than the shaking and vomiting and nearly dying when you walk away from heroin, because there’s a success in that hell. There are moments of hope, between the delirium. Love is only ever failure-- his greatest failure, really, and he’s had several. No one with so many successes could avoid a few true catastrophic mistakes, not even Sherlock Holmes. Nothing’s ever come close to the horror of falling in love.

Love makes you trite and stupid. There are only two ways to fall in love: madly, like laughter and drug abuse, or sweetly like falling into bed. Sherlock is thankful at least that his love is the first kind. It puts parts of him in order, somehow, being consumed like this. But still, it’s trite, and it’s stupid, and it’s really nowhere near as wonderful as heroin can be. It just isn’t.

He doesn’t understand why he can’t overcome it. Lying in bed with John, lying beside him or under him, aching and harder than he’s ever been in his life, is absolute hell. Because it feels like the beginning of enough. Nothing has ever been enough, and that’s how Sherlock manages to function. As long as it’s never enough, he can keep moving, keep outrunning the thing inside him that will burn him alive. Whatever it is. The thing he keeps in the basement of his mind, the thing that made John hate him.

He really does hate John back, for making him weak. And for letting him into his bed, for wrapping himself around Sherlock and making it finally enough. The longing, the need, that was what made love okay. It is not okay to be loved back.

His greatest failure, crawling into John’s bed. 

So he’s crying now, with real tears as John fills him with fingers. John keeps stopping, keeps asking, and that makes it so much worse. John is supposed to be using him, but instead he’s going slow, one finger at a time and never quite touching the place Sherlock touches when he puts his own fingers inside himself. It was better when it hurt.

The good part of Sherlock, the part that sees everything, keeps intruding: _Look at you. You’re moaning, low and long and lazy. How much of it’s for John’s benefit and how much is you losing control? That sound you made, Sherlock, at the stretch of John’s second finger. Did you hear it? You sound like everyone else._

But it feels amazing. Just the right amount of pain to offset the pleasure, not enough to punish him the way he deserves. And John’s looking at him in open worship, and that is the beginning of enough. 

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” says John, and Sherlock _knows_ that and never cares, but it’s agony to hear it from John. It was supposed to be punishment. John wasn’t supposed to ask permission. Another failure. “God, the sounds you make,” John whispers. “You’re so good, Sherlock, you’re so perfect like this.”

Sherlock swallows and says, “Fuck me,” and John laughs.

“Desperate for my cock?” Sherlock wants to laugh too, but John’s got two fingers in him and his other hand flat on his pelvis. “You’re almost ready for me,” says John. “Gotta make sure you can take it.”

_No no no no no,_ Sherlock thinks. _I_ can’t _take it; that’s the point!_ It has to hurt, has to be too much so it’s not enough. “Please,” Sherlock whines. “God, please.” 

John’s face is unfamiliar only because Sherlock is inexperienced. Sherlock knows that, can generalise: there are a finite number of expressions that mean a finite number of things, so it’s reasonable to assume that a novel expression seen in a novel situation is typical to that situation. 

The expression of arousal isn’t new. Possessiveness, awe, all of these he can recognise from past experience. What’s new is the combination, the melange of rough desire and tender gratitude. Sherlock is floored by it. It’s in John’s voice, too, the soft careful voice men and boys use when they’re afraid of scaring a lover away, with that delicious growl underneath. All of it, the face and the tone, makes a perfect picture of conflict: the need to give and the need to _take_. 

“Take, John,” says Sherlock, and John shakes his head.

Because John’s not an idiot, not really, and he knows how to make Sherlock hurt. “Shhh,” says John, pressing down his palm between Sherlock’s hipbones while the fingers of his other hand move slowly. “I’ve got you. Just keep breathing. Don’t speak. Good, yes, just like that, Sherlock. You can take another finger now, can’t you? Ready? Oh god, Sherlock, this is just… Look at you. God, look at you. Tell me how it feels.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes, opens his mouth, and says “Uhhhmmmmph!” He closes his eyes and tries again: “Mmmmfull,” he says, and he gives up in disgust.

“Yeah, so full,” John mumbles in his tender-rough voice. “God, so tight. I’m barely going to fit, you know that?”

Sherlock nods, tears and snot making his face shine. _Three fingers is different than two_ , thinks Sherlock. When did things get so quiet inside his head? His thoughts are slow and it takes him a moment to realise that he’s arching off the bed now, making a sound he can’t explain, and John is staring down toward—oh. Sherlock looks down at his own cock and is surprised to see how much he’s leaking, and then everything rushes at him at once Oh god, it’s _pleasure_ , it’s ecstasy making him stupid, and he doesn’t care. How could he care when John’s fingers are providing perfect pressure against his prostate, a gentle massage that still shoots sparks through him? 

“Oh god,” says Sherlock, “Oh god, oh fuck, oh god please.” He knew that John touching him would be better than touching himself, but how can it possibly by _this much_ better when it’s the same exact thing, just pressure against nerves but dear god and why should love have anything to do with pleasure and is it love or is it just that it’s someone else, that he can’t predict it, like being tickled.

For the first time in decades, none of Sherlock’s thoughts are in Latin. 

He finds this very, very disturbing.

**Author's Note:**

> My non-fannish writing (which is still quite a lot about Sherlock Holmes) can be found at butlikesowhat.wordpress.com
> 
> 1) Dubcon is only dubcon in behaviour, not in actual emotions, i.e. Sherlock does want it, but in real life, it would be morally ...unwise for John to wait so long to make sure that's true. I'd certainly be v upset to be treated that way, at least by someone with whom I didn't already have a very trusting established BDSM relationship.


End file.
